Editing Mood and Themes (section)

== Mood ==

'''Adventurous''' and '''Dangerous''' is our moods we're going for.  In Search of the Unknown is a game that is significantly more serious than Heroic Earth but a good deal more light-hearted than '''Eberron'''.  Alfein is a fantasy setting where death is real and an immediate problem, crime is rampant, the courts and nobility are totally corrupt, and there's no resurrection spells (though revival is possible for a few minutes after death).  There's a good number of foreign spies in the city and plenty of potential with simmering racial tensions plus unpleasant Hellish monsters lying underneath the city just waiting to spring out to kidnap children in the dead of night.

What is different is the fact that Winterweir has survived ten million years and it is almost certainly going to survive another such whether our player characters live or die.  No Rajahs exist in the game and the Terra'ssar survivors have loftier concerns than us.  If there was a plot to acquire four elemental orbs and save the world from Chaos, then some other guys handled it last month.  If there is an attack on the city, it will be a one time affair and something well beyond our heroes to do much beyond participate.  The City is bigger than our heroes, let alone the world that its a part of.

With this reduced focus, there's significantly more interest in low-scale heroing.  A single murder or a string of them in Alfein is big news and this game encourages player characters to strengthen their ties to the city.  It's a place where relatives can get endangered or one can reasonably be concerned about having one's job threatened.  Player characters should think about what is important to them and why they're interested in helping the world be a nicer place than it started.